Enough, let's see the books!

Well my last endurance race was 2012 on a 600.
But did endurance race a oil air cooled GSXR 750 back in 94 for national and Cmra Endurance.
Now while the hp level has gone up the weight has gone down.
But not every body has to race a liter bike.
I mean i own a CR500 i woods ride.
So that being said maybe some should just admit that a 600 would be a better choice to race.
Between tires and total cost of yr its cheaper and back when i was racing full time faster and able to win overall endurance races.
My point is maybe you should look at tire cost and bike cost to make sure a liter bike is what you can afford and physically ride for time needed to be on track.
Im sorry im old school.
Ive ran slicks in rain before.
I still dont own or use tire warmers.
I use a Tahoe and small trailer to haul bikes and i do this on a budget so i can continue to do when im able.
But if i did choose to ride a liter bike id make sure i was prepared to ride how ever long i was asked to do.
Even at 54 im still capable.
And back in 98 i did endurance race a TLS 1000 at Wera National endurance and we even won a few races.
But i dont consider that a liter bike by todays standards.
But todays rider just do things differently.

Steven

 

The BBE has been an awesome series, but has declined slowly over the years. Heck, it's probably dead and on life support for the last couple of years. It's probably cost; it went from cheap to grab 4-5 people to more expensive from a tire perspective, to complicated when 4-5 riders became 2-3 because of injuries or personal finance situations. Then, LW bikes started to grow exponentially in popularity along with the endurance program and bam; the plug had to be pulled. Just not enough BBE to pay the bills for a huge chunk of the weekend.

The customers drive the program so to speak.

 

Yes I see what you mean...

In 1999 we finished 13th overall in a CMRA BBE which had 52 bikes on the grid.

Just checked and it looks like now they don´t even get 13 bikes to start...

 

And those 13 won't make every round, so then it's like 4-5 teams competing for the season and depending on track, maybe 10 or less for an event. It sucks bad.

 

I raced with the CMRA between 2009 and 2013. It's always been nothing but a bunch of excuses for why things can't work. If you know a racers lifespan is +/- 5 years then your primary focus should always be on how we can keep them longer and how we can back fill with new racers. That starts with partnering with track day organizations and listening to the current membership's suggestions.

But it's always easier to blame the weather, or the economy, or the manufacturers, or the costs, or the lawsuits and make excuses about why we can't do things differently. The excuses never made sense to me probably because they weren't rooted in principles but rather in personalities.

Make no mistake about it... the leadership and culture ran this club into the ground.

 

You really need to look at who was BBE racing what back in the 1990’s to understand why it was so popular then.

That race in Hallett OK in August of 1999 had 52 starters.

It was won by a GSXR 750 with a ZX9R in second and a SV650 in third. (Eric Falt, Laroy Montgomery and the guys did impressive things on that 650...)

The majority of entrants were 600s...

There was one other 900 in the top 10 - and the only “liter bike” to finish was us on my TLR back in 13th... which was ok considering it had the speed and manners of an overweight 600.

Mixed in were a few 250 two strokes, FZR 400 Yamaha’s, EX 500 Kawasaki and even and one Honda NT 650.

So it wasn’t a field full of professional level teams on liter bikes.

Just regular people taking out whatever they had for a fun ride - mostly sticking to a 600 or thereabouts which with some care might go 4 or 5 hours on one rear tire...

I can see why light weight endurance might pull a lot of people away from this.

Seems like it might now work to have endurance races with two classes. Light weight two cylinders to 400 cc and medium weight 4 cylinders to 600 cc.

That might capture the spirit of both...

Just a thought...

Steve H.

 

We're all ears; how would you do it differently? I'm asking for the entire country btw....because BBE is dead everywhere. You raced for FIVE YEARS in CMRA endurance...that's much more than the mean I'd think. The average lifespan of a racer is half that.

 

How about they open the books for the whole club to see?
That would be a start and maybe 1 of the lawsuits would go away with no more wasting money on it?
How about they hire some new employees who dont treat the members like they are not important and have a better attitude towards members that ask questions?
Thats just for starters.
How about they find an outside sponsor to help make BBE worth racing and maybe people will want to come and race it again.
Notice when formula 2 was sponsored more people entered it.
Whoa what a concept.
Oh i have lots of ideals from making a kiddie area so parents can drop kids off so they can race and mom can enjoy her day at track with hubby.
Invest in the future of the kids who come as they are future racers.
This is just a short view of how i would change things if i ran club.
There you go.

Steven

 

OK - Here are some ideas for a new generation of Endurance Racing...

1) One race to include both LWEndurance and BBE. Light weight runs 300 to 400 cc twins and HWT runs only 600 cc fours or equivalent 2 / 3 cylinder engines. Yes I know there will be high closing speeds - but we got away with that before and in endurance there is no need to really push things.)

2) BBE 600 bikes are Superstock to keep engine life reasonable.

3) 600 bikes allowed just a few hard "spec" choices for rear tires. Aim is for them to all be roughly equal in terms of tires - and able to run 4 or 5 hours without a tire change during the race and all that involves.

4) Two (non compulsory) warm up laps immediately before the start of the race - lets be nice to any guys who don´t have tire warmers.

5) Hand held gravity fed fuel filler cans - no complicated / expensive pressure feed systems etc...

6) Find some way to involve track day guys who can run a decent pace. Maybe one or two endurance races per year for the same price as a track day - and a special class where within reason they can run most anything they have...

There´s lots more possibilities but that will do for a start ...

Flame away...

SH

 

I think it really hurts the sport, there are lots of fast guys sitting at home because of the tire bill.
And there are lots of new people walking away bevbecathey think they need a set of tires per sprint.

 

I switched to small bikes when I discovered out how much fun and inexpensive they are to race. Did the 12 hours of Texas on one set of tires.

 

I'm not trying to so no to this but it's more of a track choice thing. Look at for instance NOLA, it eats tires. But yeah I think this idea has some merit.

IMHO the golden age of M/C road racing was (when costs weren't crazy) the middle 80s to the middle 90s. The selection of bikes was great, FZR400s, EX500s, SRX600, Ascot 500s, 500 Interceptors, Hawks, RZ350s, etc. etc. And yes small bores but they were all ok to great for endurance racing. Tires lasted longer and warmers were not YET a must have. Race gas wasn't yet 25 plus bucks a gallon.

Since then technology has made bikes have more of everything, HP, speed, electronics, fuel injection, suspension, etc. And most importantly more expensive to make all of these things work properly to go fast.

 

I would start by not worrying about the rest of the country. Texas has always been an outlier.

I didn't race BBE for 5 years. I sprinted for 5 years, did mini endurance for 2 years and BBE for a couple of years. I agree, it's not easy keeping a BBE team together and it didn't help that if you wanted to win you need the tank, quick fill and quick change.

I'm not sure anything can be done at this point but here are a few things that were brought up years ago that focus solely on the idea of back filling with new racers.

I think being in bed with LSTD was a mistake. Giving the exclusive right to a single organization to license and run the Friday practice made no sense. There were 4 or 5 organizations with loyal followings in Texas at the time and the CMRA wanted nothing to do with them. LSTD had so many polarizing folks working for them that many of us refused to ride with them so we went through Longhorn Motorcycle School and got our CCS license and then used that to get our CMRA license. The CMRA missed our money on the school and missed our corner working labor (about $250/total per new racer licensed through LMS). The CMRA wanted nothing to do with Ridesmart Motorcyle School. over personalities, but no one worked harder to get new riders to the track than Dave Wonders. And the marketing angle that Ridesmart would have provided for the club was priceless. The kind of help he could have provided would have cost hundreds of thousands with a marketing firm. The guy ran over 30 track days a year, with 200 riders at almost every event. The CMRA shit all over him and look at him now... He's the only one left, the only one who can afford COTA and still the King of getting new riders to the track. Kinda like Solyendra... the CMRA shouldn't be in the business of picking winners and losers. At this point, I would probably try to approach Dave Wonders and figure out a way to partner. Now that LSTD is no longer the exclusive Friday practice provider Ridesmart doesn't have to worry about spending the money and putting forth the effort to bring in new riders only to give them away to LSTD.

After all the pissing and moaning about track day providers and little progress being made it was suggested that the CMRA run their own Friday practice and at least try to capture the profit they were giving to LSTD on Friday practices. Just a bunch of excuses followed about how we aren't in the track day business and no money can be made on Friday practices, etc. As of a few weeks or months ago the club now has The CMRA Track Experience... on Fridays. Oh the irony. But here's why it wont work, because no one markets effectively. A post on Facebook and a blurb in RRW ain't going to get it done. It takes boots on the ground, IMO.

Marketing... Why doesn't the club do more marketing? We were told non profits can't advertise. I don't know the law on that but I see plenty of non profts on the television. Maybe they are a different type? Well, if you can't advertise then all the more reason to have a track day orgs doing it for you. I owned a forum that had a few thousand members and A LOT were racers. We started a section called "Central Motorcycle Road Racing Association" which was for us racers to bullshit and also a place that new forum members could ask questions and get advice. It was awesome. It was busy and we were encouraging new members who were doing our SMR's to come racing. We were raising money for one another, selling shirts and giving the money to a new racer.. all kinds of cool shit to get people to the racetrack. Another free marketing arm for the club. They asked us to take it down. You can go on FB today, type in CMRA, and there are 3+ unofficial pages. So was it personal? I dunno but it sure was dumb.

Class sponsorships.. I sponsored a few classes over the years with real greenbacks. Not $50 off labor for some bullshit no one wants. The club doesn't do nearly enough for it's class sponsors. No banners, no commercial reads, no real encouragement to use those that support the club really nothing but your name on the grid sheet and if you were lucky enough to get a premier expert class sponsorship you might read that Dustin Dominguez won the Public Storage C Superstock Expert Race in RRW. Those sponsorship should be cash and they should be more expensive and should not be available to the guy who wants to give $10 off refreshing your forks when I wouldn't let them do it for free. More class sponsors and exper racers winning real dollars might keep them around longer.

But let's forget the marketing, I agree... it's too much work for volunteers and if you don't have the balls to direct the paid employees to do it (or adjust their compensation to include these duites) then I would partner with ALL the track day orgs. Unfortunately we shit all over the only one of any significance today.

None of this is hindsight. These were all very real suggestions that were controversial and created plenty of conflict. In the end the club reluctantly agreed to let other schools license racers but the exclusive track day provider remained and it really gave no incentive to the orgs to push their customers into racing because they lose them.

But anyway, I spent enough time on this post. I made some lifelong friends through the club and many are still very much a part of my life. I'll always look back on those 5 years as some of the best in my life. Good luck to you guys!

 

Agreed...big tanks, quick fills, quick changes don't help when teams want a shot at an overall.

Wonderbread does a GREAT job of getting track day riders into the fold, no doubt. He's not interested in partnering with the CMRA however primarily because he says once his riders become racers, they don't come back. I think there's some logic to that and the adage of track days competing with race orgs is well documented.

There were several challenges we (the CMRA) had with running track days as opposed to having someone else run them: how to have a street group which makes up a sizeable portion of the revenue(insurance); how to handle support/corner workers (necessity of having staff there an extra day early); but the biggest (to me anyway) is the financial exposure for a rain busted weekend. From what I understand, our attorneys figured out a way to allow a street group and that's where the new "experience program" comes from.

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Another downside to being a non-profit; there are some intricacies in advertising and marketing that aren't allowed per IRS code. That's another area that the board and some of our membership are looking in to.

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All awesome suggestions and I love everyone...seriously. My personal belief is that if the CMRA were no longer a non-profit, we could do more. As Mongo will tell you though, it's almost like threading the proverbial needle financially. A couple of events used to keep the club floating through the less profitable (yes, a non-profit can turn a profit) events. We HAVE to figure out as an industry (racing, track days, manufacturers, service providers, etc.) how to grow the sport. It's every so slowly shrinking. I've got three step kids who think they'll freaking melt if they set their phones down and get in the sun. I think MANY kids are like this. Maybe I'm the old crotchety dude, but this generation in general is so freaking soft it's scary. That doesn't help either.

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Dude, thanks for checking in and sharing your thoughts!!

 

Hell no, nice ideas! Right now, I THINK 600's hold every track record we race at except NOLA. Not that I don't think your idea of LW and MW on the track at the same time wouldn't work, but wondering if it would be closer for LW and 650's? Differentiation if MUCH closer.

 

what about 600's with two plug wires removed?